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Archive for August 20th, 2010
Congo River Journey Ends in Boat Troubles
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
NYTimes: Back in Kinshasa, and at last we have some time to relax in the mission where our journey began. It was quite a trip downriver -- our "speed" boat had broken down, so we ended up hitching a tow from a leaky pirogue with an ancient 15-horsepower outboard engine. The journey from Tshumbiri to Kinshasa took a day and a night of solid motoring, and we arrived rather bedraggled but happy to have made it in one piece. But now well rested and re-energized, for the last few days we have been packing ...
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Acquiring a Taste for Recycled Water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
Inter Press Service: Many Batswana are quick to recoil at the mere mention of drinking treated wastewater. "As soon as I hear it is treated waste water, my mind will be flooded with the images of the waste water before being treated and I will never drink it," says 25-year-old Chandida Matebu, the look on her face confirming her words. "I would drink if I was not aware that it was treated. But even if it comes bottled and shipped all the way from America, I will not drink. The water would not pass ...
Damaged ecosystems amplify killer floods
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
Discovery: Climate change may be playing a part in record rains ravaging Asia but environment experts say the destruction of ecosystems is more directly to blame for the severity of killer floods. Widespread deforestation, the conversion of wetlands to farms or urban sprawl and the clogging up of natural drainage systems with garbage are just some of the factors exacerbating the impacts of the floods, they say. "You can't just blame nature... humans have encroached on the natural flood ...
Mont. Homebuilders Win Battle in Long-Running Well War
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
Greenland: While the state environmental agency pledged to revisit the law next year, petitioners whose challenge was rejected expressed doubt the process would quickly yield meaningful changes in the well-permitting law. "It's a huge problem, and people need to wise up," said petitioner Polly Rex, whose property neighbors a 67-home subdivision. The houses are set to be outfitted with individual, permit-exempt wells that she worries will dry up her springs and lower the Stillwater River, where ...
United Kingdom: Heavy rain sparks flash floods in Wales
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
Press Association: Firefighters dealt with flash floods today after heavy rain fell on parts of Wales. Forecasters warned of further downpours tomorrow as more wet weather was on the way. Crews were called out in South Wales after heavy rain during the morning. A spokesman for Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service said: "We have had several incidents of flooding this morning in and around the Swansea and Neath areas. "We have had about 30 flood-related calls that were affecting ...
Pakistan floods – worst hit areas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
Guardian: X
Closeness to oil spill key to many claims
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
AP: Details released Friday about how claims will be paid from BP PLC's $20 billion fund show that how close geographically a person or business is to the Gulf oil spill will play a key role. The claims process is shifting from BP to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility effective Monday. It will be run by Washington attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who also handled claims from the 9/11 terror attacks. The new rules govern emergency claims that can be made between Monday and Nov. 23. Claimants ...
BP spill payouts likely to prohibit lawsuits: report
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
AFP: Recipients of money from BP's 20-billion-dollar oil spill compensation fund will likely be required to waive their right to sue any firm involved in the disaster along the US Gulf Coast, The New York Times reported Friday. Citing internal documents from lawyers handling the fund, the daily said businesses and individuals who accepted compensation from the fund would waive their rights to sue not only the British energy giant, but any company implicated in the largest accidental spill ...
Radical transparency could lay bare the eco impact of our shopping
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
Yale Environment 360: With climate legislation dead in Congress and the fizzled hopes for a breakthrough in Copenhagen fading into distant memory, the time seems ripe for fresh strategies -- especially ones that do not depend on government action. Here's a modest proposal: radical transparency, the laying bare of a product's ecological impacts for all to see. Economic theory applied to ecological metrics offers a novel way to ameliorate our collective assault on the global systems that sustain life. ...
Dust-Bowl Bust Haunts Wheat Farmers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 20th, 2010
NY: Wheat got a bad rap in the 1930s, and has been faulted in environmental retrospectives ever since as the crop that caused the Dust Bowl in the Great Depression. It's only partly true, of course –- it could have been any of a number of other crops that boomed too hard in the go-go 1920s, causing too many small farmers on the high plains to plant too much on land too fragile to sustain the load. Drought and the collapse of farm prices did the rest. A newly vulnerable landscape peeled up from ...